Note: some graphic scenes.

"Look, man, you don't have to be here if you don't want to. Y-you can just wait outside while I..." Smith couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, but Big knew. It was obvious, after all... they were standing in the middle of a cold morgue in Brooklyn.

Big stares at Smith. His potentially beautiful features are damaged by trauma and sleepless nights, and are all the more highlighted by the harsh light of the morgue. The disturbing clinical backdrop just made the image even more unsettling, and even more impossible to leave him alone. Big places his hand on Smith's shoulder and gives him a wink, "I'm here, bro."

A couple of hours earlier Smith had rang Carrie's apartment asking Big for a favor. After a slightly awkward conversation, Big agreed to chauffeur Smith to the City of New York Morgue to pick up Samantha, which he thought was strange at first; he'd spoke to the guy once during an event with the girls a couple of months back, and they could barely pass for being acquaintances, but strange things do happen in the face such colossal tragedy. It's as though the world opens up, and for that moment in time, the world isn't what it usually is; Smith was more than a stranger to Big right now, he was a friend who needed his help.

"Are you ready?" A white uniform-clad woman has just appeared in the room. Smith tenses his face and nods slowly; 'ready' is something he would never be. Big tightens his grip on Smith's shoulder. The woman walks towards a steel drawer a couple of meters away. Smith holds his breath. Big does the same. She grips the drawer handle and pulls forward. Smith closes his eyes. He opens them...

There she is.

He steps back, light-headed, feeling numb and feeling everything all at the same time.

"You okay, man?" Big turns concernedly to him.

Smith doesn't answer; instead he stares at what used to be Samantha, lying flat in a pulled-out drawer like some out-of-date files in an office cabinet. He looks down at the skin he used to touch, once plump and soft, now sallow and sunken... at the hand he used to hold, laying deathly still, never to be able to feel his or grip back ever again... and he stares at her face... her face... never to smile, never to cry, never to move again... wearing an expression so unnatural to her character, an expression he'd never seen her wear, even through the turmoil of cancer and the impossible notion of facing death. It wasn't even an expression... it was dead.

Big stares too, lost in his own trance of thought. He knew Samantha was dead; he held Carrie's hand as they watched her die; he was there when the doctor confirmed it; and he had aided Carrie through her pain for the past 48 hours, but seeing it there in front of him, a woman once so full-of-life reduced to the most lifeless thing you'll ever see, was the true confirmation. Big's eyes widened; he hadn't had the intimacy with Samantha like Smith had, but he had the history, and suddenly his mind became uncontrollably flooded with memories; when she asked him for a cigar the first night they met at 'Chaos' six years ago; when she told him to rescue Carrie from Paris a couple of months ago, scolding him like only a true friend would; and just three days ago, the day before her death, when she told him to look after Carrie for her and 'never fucking leave her again.'

"Is this her?" the woman spoke. They had completely forgotten she was in the room. Was it her? The odd thing was that even though Samantha was technically in front of them, she had never felt more gone. "Yeah," Smith replied weakly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, that's her," Big said firmly, feeling slightly agitated. The woman nods and pushes Samantha's corpse back into the wall of steel drawers. "Come on, man," Big turns to Smith, who's still staring down as if Samantha is still in view, "lets get out of here."

"Back to the meat-packing district, Raoul," Big says, not in the usual bellowing voice he often addresses to his chauffeur, but in a quiet somber tone. It took him and Smith five minutes to reach the Morgue car park, in which none of them spoke a word. Big slams the door behind him and turns to Smith, glancing at him sympathetically and slightly uneasily; he's used to having pretty girls at the back seat of his 'Batmobile', not a grown man in mourning.

"Thanks for doing this, man," to his relief, Smith spoke first. "I just needed someone with me for this. I don't have many friends in New York and I didn't wanna ask any of the girls, you know?"

"Don't mention it, dude" Big gives him a small smile as the vehicle pulls out of the car park. In a few minutes their relationship went from being merely strangers to something more, and the experience they just endured together had brought them a strange sense of closeness. Maybe seeing death right in front of you brings that out in people.

Smith removes his sunglasses and rubs his eyes, staring out of the blacked-out windows at nothing in particular... at the white lines flashing by on the tarmac they were driving on, at Miranda and Steve's neighborhood they pass on their way through Brooklyn, at the magnificent view of Manhattan from Brooklyn Bridge; magnificent though tainted by the fact it had one less resident... a very special resident.

Smith winces at the sight of a massive billboard of his "Absolut Hunk" vodka campaign that comes theatrically into view as they passed through Times Square. Big stares at it too, at the girls and sexually confused boys surrounding it excitedly, and he felt for the poor guy; not only was Smith going through one drastic change in his life; an existence without Samantha, he was also going through another; fast-rising fame that was growing alarmingly by the day. Big wondered if it was too much for a person to handle by themselves, and if he actually needed Big for more than just a day at the Morgue.

"Oh, shit," Smith uttered. They had turned a corner into the meat-packing district and there was a swarm of people surrounding a particular building a little ahead.

"What's going on?" Big asks.

"Word must've got out about Samantha."

"What do they care?"

"Some shitty magazines have been following her condition for the past few months, making it like some kind of weekly story."

"Well, that's fuckin' sick," snaps Big as the vehicle moves steadily closer to the commotion; a swarm of camera-holding parasites surrounds Samantha's apartment building door, while a multitude of strangers, some even holding "Absolut Hunk" posters, encircles them. There's even a small camera crew and a blonde news reporter, a red and white E! logo visible on her microphone even behind the blacked out windows of the car.

"Isn't there a back way we can go through?"

"Nah, there's nothing like that," Smith examines the chaos coming ever closer, "It's a short walk to the door, I should be cool. You can let me out here; you and Raoul get out while you can."

"Are you kidding me? I'll be fucked if I let you walk through that by yourself. Keep driving, Raoul."

The car is mobbed as soon as it is spotted by an excitable teenage girl a couple of feet away; the array of people congregating around the door envelop the car in a mere second. Every inch of each window is covered with eyes peering in, mouths screaming and shouting and hands slamming and banging on the glass and bonnet of the car.

"Stay here," Big shouts to Smith. The volume of the wails and shrieks from outside shift from muffled to ear-splitting as Big opens his door. He battles his way through the crowd to the other side of the car and struggles to open Smith's door, throwing his arms around his shoulders and attempting to guide him through the raucous pandemonium. Smith looks straight down at the floor, his sunglasses pressed onto his face while Big stares directly in front of them, his vision only on the door a couple of feet away. Shrill and piercing voices and screeches and blinding flashes from cameras fly at them from every possible direction, overwhelming them, drowning them, frightening them.

"SMITH!"

"Smith where have you been?"

"SMITH JERROD!"

"When's the funeral Smith?"

"SMITH I LOVE YOU!"

"Smith look at the camera!"

The blonde E! news reporter fights her way in front of them, a large camera lens gets thrust in their faces, blocking them off from the door. "Smith, is there a date for the funeral yet?" She has an irritatingly boisterous voice to match her vulgar, artificial grin. "Smith, what's it like to technically be a widow?"

"Jesus, can we have some fucking respect here?" Big yells into the air, but it only serves to intensify the situation.

"We have New York financier John James Preston here, long-time lover of Samantha's best friend, Carrie Bradshaw," she speaks brashly into her microphone, "tell me, John, how is Carrie handling all of this? Will she be mentioning it in her next sex column?"

"Don't push it, sweetie," Big closes in on her face heatedly then pushes her away with his arm, making an opening for door. He fumbles with the door key for a couple of seconds before pushing Smith inside the building, giving one last glare to the tight knot of scroungers closing in on them before slamming it shut in their faces. their shouts, screams and question now reduced to a muffle behind the hardwood door. Big rests his back on the door, rolls his head back, closes his eyes and exhales loudly.

Life had gotten pretty crazy since Samantha died, but apparently it was just getting crazier.

There you go! I hope it was worth the wait. Sorry it was this late, I have a job that demands most of my life sometimes. Please review ;)